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Place Branding: How to Build a Powerful Tourism Brand

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Place Branding: How to Build a Powerful Tourism Brand Dipartimento di Impresa e Management CATTEDRA: Tourism Management Place branding: How to build a powerful tourism brand MATTEO GIULIANO CAROLI RICCARDO RESCINTI Relatore Correlatore 692291 FALZARANO SABINO ANNO ACCADEMICO: 2018-2019 1 Acknowledgements I would like to say a special “thanks” to my thesis’ supervisor: Professor Matteo Giuliano CAROLI and to my associated coordinator: Dr. Stefano FRANCO. The coordinator had always “ready-to-use” suggestions to increase the value of my work. Following his tips and leads has been crucial to elaborate a clearly structured work. I really appreciated the way he has collected my unchained ideas and he put them into a well-defined framework. The journey to edit the text has not at all been linear; I have bumped into many dead ends, and I really grappled on the indications of my coordinator to bounce back on the right path. Notably, he gave me the freedom to develop my ideas without any constraints. I wanted to produce an authentically personal thesis and, appreciably, he has permitted that. Notwithstanding the deadlines and the concern of issuing an inconsistent work, I never felt excessively under pressure because I know that I had by my side a great professional that has the admirable attitude to correct and to orient ideas, instead of cutting them down. I know how frustrating could be seeing crossed paragraphs. This never happened to me under the coordination of Dr. Franco. He promptly accessorized my thoughts with salvific tips. I decided to underline all those aspects because his attitude helped me a lot in remaining confident and in evoking positive feelings towards this last step of my academic adventure. I dedicate this work to my family, that has always been supportive during my studies. 2 Introduction The place branding can be summarized as the process to set on the “destinations’ market” a particular geographical destination with a unique identity, customer perception, meaning and image. The purpose of this process is to transform a place in a brand using all the tools provided by the discipline of “ brand- building”. The starting point is, therefore, recalling some principles of traditional branding theory. There is a multitude of meanings ascribed to the term “brand”; these are the shortest definitions I know, but the ones I like the most: “ A Brand is the idea, the story that exists in consumers’ mind1” “ A Brand is what people say about you when you exit the room2” Under this prospective, the Brand is a living asset and It is continuously and seamlessly shaped each time a connection is created between customer and brand it-self. Consequently, it can sound weird but, since each person experience things in life differently from peers, a brand has a manifold dimension; one dimension is utterly subjective and in many cases it turns out to outrank the others. Keeping on adopting this optic, a brand, before being a name, a sign, a jingle, a slogan, a symbol3 or the result of a plurality of “ brand components”, It is a lively impression, or better a story (a collection of memories and experiences). Memorabilia make this story being remembered by consumer/visitors. The process, that starts in the external world and that finishes in the personal and internal sphere of perception, creating a subjective brand meaning, is often unpredictable and devious. For a Company is pivotal tracking all the touchpoints with customers so it could have in its hands the control of customer journey. Obviously a full control is unfeasible. People experience and consume brands in many occasions and most of them occur outside the “official brand spaces”. Word- of- mouth contribute in creating a brand image, a reference or a mention in 1 Carlo Fei - Fashion Management material 2018 2 Jeff Bezos – CEO at Amazon 3 Erica Corbellini, Stefania Saviolo – Managing Fashion and Luxury companies, Rizzoli , 2009 3 newspapers and blogs affect the perception of a brand. Wider is the multi-channel approach, more difficult is for a company being on the top of the process. Being at the top of it for a company would mean conveying the desired message to the audience. Less is the control in the hands of enterprise, higher is the risk of a misinterpretation of the message embodied in a brand. Our current historical era seems to be brand-maniac; everything is branded: products, services, people and then places. The centralization of the brand’s role can be explained by the prowess it has in terms of self-insurance. Empirical examples can demonstrate that endurable firms are consumer oriented. The paradigm of product based vision has fallen. Creating value emotionally is the preannouncement of the measurable and tangible value transferred to buyers during the consumption of the full-fledged product. Brand encloses a promise of value, that eventually is going to be fulfilled by the branded product. Accordingly, People decision making process is triggered by the promises. Keeping the dream going on is the mantra of up-to-date brand strategies. A powerful brand is the most effective antibody in case of a product failure on the market, since customers tend to express brand loyalty rather than product loyalty. Reportedly, the primal function of a brand is “differentiating your product among competitors’ ones”. A strong brand put your products in a different shining light. Buyers believe that only your product can meet their need. Competitors remain in the dark and they stay out of consumers’ consideration set at all. The extent of substitutability is minimum. In other words, your brand occupies a preferential position in consumers’ mind. It is not a case that top- brands are also labelled as top-mind brands, just to underline this property of strong brands. To conclude our overlook on brand key-elements It is worth introducing the most impactful brand differentiator: The heritage. Not a better element than your history can be found to distinguish your-self. Each person and even each brand has a unique story behind. If you manage a brand and you are pretty insecure about what your origins are, don’t freak out; invent it! Who can prove you wrong? Having a story doesn’t mean grabbing a philosopher’s stone; is it really worthy of being listened to? Probably not, so the next step is about creating an interesting 4 story to tell to the world. In order to be more professional, I will replace the generic term “interesting” with two attributes that, hopefully, marketers will appreciate more: “ Emotionally involving and charming”. Storytelling has been proven to be the most meaningful action to create an “emotional bond” with customers. Moreover They could be your unpaid narrators of your brand’s story, too. Likewise a book’s author, The brand manager is required to set some inescapable elements for the “plot”: 1. Place & Time; 2. People ( usually the brand creator); 3. Mythological/legendary events; 4. Iconic traits. The result of this mélange is the formulation of an indistinguishable and almost immutable brand DNA. The definition of a DNA creates a sort of path- dependency since, from then on, whatever the brand manager does must be consistent with that DNA. The positive thing of having a story, under my point of view, is that people are curious to know and they seem to love the challenge of learning new things. This aspect can be seen as a form of self-improvement. Obviously cannot be forgotten that an effective storytelling adds value to the customers experience. It is like finding a more convincing justification to the purchase. This brief potpourri and synthetic recap of brand theory was required to pin the key elements that are worthwhile for all brands categories. Keeping in mind this notions we can start to unveil the art of branding places. Just to emphasize similarities with the background theory I will denote the place as “urban product4” As traditional products, also urban products compete fiercely between them on the pre-mentioned destinations market. Be careful: Not all places are destinations! At the top of the bucket list of a place brand manager there is the exigence to “turn on the light” on his destination. Also for destinations, in fact, the 4 Adam Mikołajczyk 5 differentiation is the number one brain teaser. Notwithstanding each location has unique elements, it is not so much difficult to categorize them in clusters using some elements in common. That’s why practitioners prefer talking about comparables instead of competitors. Untruly people associate place branding solely to tourism affairs. A well-done place branding take care equally of tourists and locals people and communicate extra-value to both. Educating local people about the set of value pertaining the place where they live is pivotal to ensure a long living brand to the destination. Locals keep those value alive and they became a living materialization of them. Often the perception of local community is much more influencing than place perception. A clear example is Naples. How many times have we been listening to this sentence ? “ I love the city of Naples but residents are so loud and unfriendly!” Without judging the truthfulness of sentences like these, that often are silly stereotypes, it appears evident that place branding is affected by locals. Stereotypes are brand contributors, through thick and thin. Other contributors are: logos, slogans, outdoor and digital advertising, public relations, architectural and urban designs, fairs and events, heritage, public services and policy (street cleansing, housing provision, tax breaks, sewage outfalls), public art and monuments, local facilities… Everything here mentioned is packaged and sold in the form of urban product. Each staple offers a contribution to the “placemaking5”. Its contribution is a competitive advantage or a competitive disadvantage? To scale up the ranking of destinations within a predefined cluster is necessary to reduce the competitive disadvantages.
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